I think the most egregious reason to not have the crystal gvgs at 4 utc is related to warcamps at 3 utc. The guild that wins a ZVZ will normally go on a rampage about the area after the zvz is over. This means that anyone that has to run gear for their crystal gvgs risks running into a giant zerg while trying to run gear. Or worse is just locked outta the zone by the nature of the ongoing zvz. 2 utc is a better time for everyone in the Americas with Timezones from -2 (or -3 US winter) utc to -8 or (or -9 US winter) utc. No one in the Americas should be required to start playing after midnight or before 6 to engage in premier content like this.

Most NA gvg teams have availability in the 23 - 5 utc range. Would you look at that 2 utc is directly in the middle. I know in Conflict we have lots of people that can't stay awake for 3 utc warcamps during the summer. 4 utc is even worse.

Everyone is looking at this selfishly. For people in the west coast or Asian Pacific to gvg is almost impossible if their work is even slightly past 6pm. And even then they have to skip family time and dinner to make it. The game is dead after 3 utc...most hgs are empty, no one is scrimming and a very small percentage of gvgs go on at that time.

I'm for one extremely excited that finally i'll be able to participate in a time event inside Albion. 4 UTC is a perfect time for me and many other people. and frankly everyone is upset about it not being 2 UTC. But like it's very selfish that if it doesn't fall in there UTC. they get all angry about it. Meanwhile many people such as myself can't make castle's or war camps. Which honestly i strongly recommend you bring back the castle system where every 10 mins you held it. you gained 8 siphon energy. Everyone could participate through the day and it was amazing content for everyone! When you have too many time events in a game like Albion. People will be excluded just base on there Life style. I hope SBI decides to keep the crystal GvG's at 4 UTC for NA for my sake or yet another time event other's and I won't be able to do. Maybe cut it into 4 section's? Very excited about the new patch none the less!

Everyone is looking at this selfishly. For people in the west coast or Asian Pacific to gvg is almost impossible if their work is even slightly past 6pm. And even then they have to skip family time and dinner to make it. The game is dead after 3 utc...most hgs are empty, no one is scrimming and a very small percentage of gvgs go on at that time.

I am looking forward to 4 utc content!

The game is dead after 3 utc because its late to 80% of the NA players, I hold territories at 00-02 utc and i will need to wake up 4utc(2am) or my territories will give me few energy? Theres no sense in put crystal gvgs in a timezone that the majority of the NA population cant play.

I'm for one extremely excited that finally i'll be able to participate in a time event inside Albion. 4 UTC is a perfect time for me and many other people. and frankly everyone is upset about it not being 2 UTC. But like it's very selfish that if it doesn't fall in there UTC. they get all angry about it. Meanwhile many people such as myself can't make castle's or war camps. Which honestly i strongly recommend you bring back the castle system where every 10 mins you held it. you gained 8 siphon energy. Everyone could participate through the day and it was amazing content for everyone! When you have too many time events in a game like Albion. People will be excluded just base on there Life style. I hope SBI decides to keep the crystal GvG's at 4 UTC for NA for my sake or yet another time event other's and I won't be able to do. Maybe cut it into 4 section's? Very excited about the new patch none the less!

Hi there,
Thanks again for your thoughts. Here is a quick update and some of our reasoning.

First of all we will change the first time to 02:00 UTC (for 14:00, 13:00, 12:00, 05:00, 04:00, 03:00, 02:00, 01:00, and 00:00). We made this change based on our total CCU numbers and therefore hope that most of you have a comfortable time window. But we also know that we cannot find the right time for everyone with this current system and we will hopefully be able to offer a better solution for this in an upcoming patch. Here are some additional thoughts:

To give you the most comfort we would have to set up more time zones / day, but this will reduce the chance for you to sometimes get a match at all and make matches between the same opponents also far more likely (both of which we of course want to avoid).

However, this means only two time windows will cause inconvenience for some of you.

The option of alternating between different time windows on a daily or weekly basis could offer a good compromise and is something we will take a look into, but this will of course require adjustments to our systems.

Regarding the season point thresholds, we have been keeping a close eye on the previous discussion and the reason why we stuck to the previously mentioned numbers is the following:

To ensure as many matches as possible, we want to keep all groups in one bracket. This also means every tower can potentially fight against every other tower (no matter which cluster the tower is in). This led us to give the same rewards for all towers on the world map.

To compensate for the different difficulties of capturing / holding the tower we still keep a difference of passive income for territories based on the cluster they are in. The higher your cluster is, the more passive income will come from it.

And as some pointed out, we want to shift some of the season points to an activity that is also accessible for more players (which I’ll explain a bit more below while talking about IP caps). At the same time we also keep regular territory ownership as an access gate for crystal matches.

While some of you made points against these changes, a lot of you agreed on offering a good portion of season points from such an activity, and we also think that regular participation in Crystal Realm battles should offer a significant reward.

On the topic of Item Power caps, we have the following reasoning:

Territory ownership (via GvG) still has no IP cap and still stands as the most advanced / prestigious activity.

Crystal Realm Battles should give more players the chance to actively help their guild, but since we don’t want to require everyone to maintain the highest gear at all times, we introduced a mid-level IP cap.

Keep in mind that this doesn’t prevent you from having an edge with your best in slot gear. The gap is a bit closer compared to no IP cap at all, but it is still there.

We hope that this will clear up some questions and concerns. And while some of you will have a time slot that is sadly not optimal, keep in mind that we have to offer a solution that works for most of you. We will continue looking for a better solution on the general problem of timezone-based regulations, so feel free to give your ideas and thoughts on that topic as well.

why royal stays the same? Like, we fight in anglia with 8.1 or 8.2 gear and we get only 24 energies more than a gvg that u can fight with t5 gear ? Ok boys, let’s move from anglia to royal. Change it pls

No, you will be able to participate in a Crystal Battle and later on fight a regular GvG also for the same territory. The only exception is a regular GvG that takes place at the exact same time as the Crystal Battle.

Why are season points for Anglia being reduced by 50%, Cumbria by 42% and Mercia only by 36%? This isn't fair for guilds that hold Anglia or Cumbria territories. A better system would be to keep a territory's default energy production the same as it is now and just make crystal gvgs add additional season points if the crystal gvg team wins.

Psychologically its much worse to nerf something and force the players have to do more just to get back to the points level they were before the nerf, than to keep things the same and give players the opportunity to earn more by participating in the new crystal gvg system.

Territories were already nerfed when mage raiding was changed to give season points. They are about to get another nerf from the t8 resources removal. Don't make the crystal gvg system into yet another nerf to holding a territory. Instead keep territory energy production where it is now, and make crystal gvg victories give bonus season points. Crystals gvgs will be an additional thing for the community to do, so it should feel like an additional reward, not something people have to do just to try to get their season point production back to where it was before crystal gvgs nerfed it.

Why are season points for Anglia being reduced by 50%, Cumbria by 42% and Mercia only by 36%? This isn't fair for guilds that hold Anglia or Cumbria territories. A better system would be to keep a territory's default energy production the same as it is now and just make crystal gvgs add additional season points if the crystal gvg team wins.

Psychologically its much worse to nerf something and force the players have to do more just to get back to the points level they were before the nerf, than to keep things the same and give players the opportunity to earn more by participating in the new crystal gvg system.

Territories were already nerfed when mage raiding was changed to give season points. They are about to get another nerf from the t8 resources removal. Don't make the crystal gvg system into yet another nerf to holding a territory. Instead keep territory energy production where it is now, and make crystal gvg victories give bonus season points. Crystals gvgs will be an additional thing for the community to do, so it should feel like an additional reward, not something people have to do just to try to get their season point production back to where it was before crystal gvgs nerfed it.

I know that it doesn't feel good to see a smaller number after the update. But the problem here is that rewards from season points all have a certain value and are balanced in a way that we give a fixed value per point. Now If we drastically increase season points available, we would give out far more of these rewards (which will have a bad impact on the economy).

If it would be all about 'perceiving' the higher number we could multiply everything by 10 but in the end the relative relation of these values would still not change. And by keeping the total amount of season points roughly the same, we keep the value per point the same. And this is important as well.

Regarding the actual thresholds: We wanted to make sure that the ownership of the territories still shows a significant difference between royal, low, mid and high. And by shifting more points away from Mercia to Anglia for example would change the maximum output of a territory, which we keep stable for now (except for royal of course).

so...........why is a resource territory needed for these? I am not getting why the general population can't sign up. Did I miss some way in which this interacts with terries aside from a dev choice of whom to make it available to or where to install a menu?

so...........why is a resource territory needed for these? I am not getting why the general population can't sign up. Did I miss some way in which this interacts with terries aside from a dev choice of whom to make it available to or where to install a menu?

They've mentioned trying to regulate that amount of points/energy available. That requires some sort of cap to manage easily. If there is no barrier to entry, we could end up with tons of shell teams bring entered that are just hoping for a no show in order to earn free rewards. That also ruins the experience for any real team that ends up paired with such a fake team.

Seems like other barriers could be used though. Farms, royal cities, warcamps, and town plots are all examples of other game fixtures that could be used to grant tickets. Might not be fair to the watchtower people though as the system requires you to get your gear to the cluster. Entry points from 100% safe areas gets around that.

@Jolder Have SBI considered creating more than two timers for Crystal GvGs? IE 2 and 4 UTC for NA and something like 12 and 16 (or whatever makes sense, I'm an NA player) for EU? Seems like a simple solution for getting the most players involved.